If I intentionally mess up LD_LIBRARY_PATH it dies differently since it can't find the lib. In this case it finds the lib but grouches about the missing 'charsetid' symbol. And I said I had little control since I know I can install another Perl install, but with this system unable to hit the outside world with a network, getting the modules set up wouldn't be pretty and when I move to deploy it would be torturous. It's working other than this one part, so unless I was certain that this was due to an old Perl I wouldn't want to go that way. I am using DBD::Proxy as a workaround for now.